sans titre

Sorry for the silence. I had another one of those pesky vacations. The first week I stayed here, which proved to be quite boring and bad for my mental health. The second week my parents arrived and we went to Paris. It was lovely. I had forgotten that not every part of France is like Angouleme and the reasons why I'd decided to study this language. Paris reminded me.

We've been having some very crazy weather. It snowed last night, but I'm wearing a sleeveless shirt today.

As of tomorrow, I only have 4 more weeks remaining until my contract is over. I think that the school is now realizing the folly in giving me a six-month contract when the students won't take their exam until the end of June. So, they're busy
trying to give me extra projects before I get outta here. The director of the school
has asked me to record every article I've used in conversation classes, and the English teacher I work with wants me to record texts she will use after I'm gone.
This might seem like a worthwhile use of my time if a) the students were motivated
self-learners, b) the final exam was based on listening comprehension, or c) I had a British accent--something, it has been made very clear, that they would prefer I had. This semester I've been working with a group of students who normally study
Spanish but are going to sort of try their luck at the English exam (it won't hurt
their score if they blow it, but it could help them). I've wound up having a lot of fun with them, since none of the "real" teachers are involved and we play it by ear every class and get fantastically off topic. So last week I mentioned the fact that we were only meeting 4 more times (which they should have already known), but half of them screamed out "No, what are we going to do!? You can't just leave", as if the decision were my own to leave them in a lurch. Then I probably spoke too much, but I informed them of the lovely directrice's decision about the voice recordings, peppered, of course, with my own personal opinions. Marcela (the Mexican version of me in the school) and I went to meet with the directrice about a month ago to dissuade her from the voice recordings. I don't understand why a monolingual administrator thinks she is such an expert at language pedagogy, but she was set in stone about the tapes. She also didn't appreciate our respectful insubordination. From that day on she has stopped using the formal "vous" with me and uses "tu". If this woman were actually a friend of mine, then I would appreciate it, but in this situation I think it's purely a lack of respect. Anyway, my students openly admitted that they would never use these tapes. Even if they were go-getters, the exam is based on reading a text and giving an oral presentation.

I'm currently involved in a very lop-sided email correspondance with the grad school people in England. I'm averaging four emails before I get a response. The replies usually contain information that I not only already know, but information that I, in fact, gave to them that they are now taking on as their own. Oh well.

Is there anything Frenchie that anyone out there would like me to bring back? Or anything Portuguese, since I'll be there the two weeks before I return? How about a nice, large piece of salt cod? Oh my, I can't wait...

This afternoon Martin, Jess, and I walked to the Salle Némo at the Cartoon museum to see "Reinas", a Spanish flick about gay marriage. It was no Almodovar, but it wasn't bad. And at least, as I said afterward, it made me forget that I live in Angouleme for a couple hours. The best/worst thing that I discovered, though, was that by showing the card that lets me eat in the school cafeteria, I can get in to the cinema for 2.30. How many times did I pay 7?